Everything Everywhere All at Once is crazy. The second and latest feature from directing team Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (stylized as Daniels) is the type of crazy that lends itself to being described by listing stuff in a reverent, dumbfounded tone. Hot dog fingers, a talking raccoon, butt plug karate, Michelle Yeoh dressed up as a dominatrix spanking a guy — all this and more, the tongue-in-cheek list says without saying, you can expect to see in this film.

Actually, films that induce this kind of wordless stupor in critics (rarely a bunch to be short of words — short of a lot of other things, but never words) are often bad: Scott Pilgrim, Eternal Sunshine, The Lobster, most Marvel films, all of Charlie Kaufman’s films, and in fact the Daniels’ first film, Swiss Army Man. What is there to say? Lots of stuff happens. There are lots of characters doing lots of eye-grabbing things in short succession. They say cute, disorienting things and do charming, unpredictable things in a predictable sequence, somewhere a story weaves in, the momentum builds, usually it gets chintzy in the end, and then, it ends.

In films like these, the audience is manipulated to produce so many reactions — laugh, cry, gasp — at such a rapid rate that they shortly realize they have two options: stop watching and regain homeostasis or give in to the slipstream of cinematic herky-jerky for a couple hours. And these films are (with the exception of the truly terrible Lobster) usually brightly colored, quickly paced, and full of fun, pretty celebrities inviting you to laugh with them. What kind of stick in the mud can resist? And really what’s the problem? Nothing, in the moment. But by the time you validate your parking, the plot structure goes. Riding up the elevator, the characters go. And by the time you’re half way home, all that’s left of the film in your mind is a few brightly colored wisps — a glib line of dialogue, maybe a particularly well-decorated frame.